Her eyes filled with tears. Denise, whose eyelids were also moistening with pity, asked her: "Does my aunt suspect anything?"
"Yes, mamma has her suspicions, I think. As for papa, he is too much worried, and does not know the pain he is causing me by postponing the marriage. Mamma has questioned me several times, greatly alarmed to see me pining away. She has never been very strong herself, and has often said to me: 'My poor child, you're like myself, by no means strong. Besides, one doesn't grow much in these shops. But she must find me getting really too thin now. Look at my arms; would you believe it?"
Then with a trembling hand she again took up the water bottle. Her cousin tried to prevent her from drinking.
"But I'm so thirsty," said she, "let me drink."
They could hear Baudu talking in a loud voice. Then suddenly yielding to an inspiration of her heart, Denise knelt down before Geneviève and throwing her sisterly arms round her neck, kissed her, and assured her that everything would yet turn out all right, that she would marry Colomban, would get well, and live happily. And then she got up quickly for her uncle was calling her.
It was indeed Jean, who, looking rather scared, had just arrived for dinner. When they told him it was striking eight, he seemed amazed. Impossible! He had only just left his master's. They chaffed him. No doubt he had come by way of the Bois de Vincennes. But as soon as he could get near his sister, he whispered to her: "It's all the fault of a little laundry-girl. I've got a cab outside by the hour. Give me five francs."
He went out for a minute, and then returned to dinner, for Madame Baudu would not hear of his going away without taking, at least, a plate of soup. Geneviève had returned to the shop in her usual silent and retiring manner. Colomban was now half asleep behind the counter; and the evening passed away, slow and melancholy, only animated by Baudu's tramp, as he walked from one end of the empty shop to the other. A single gas-burner was alight--the shadows of the low ceiling fell in large masses, like black earth from a ditch.
Several months passed away. Denise came in nearly every evening to cheer up Geneviève a bit, but the Baudus' home became more melancholy than ever. The works opposite were a continual torment, which made them feel their bad luck more and more keenly. Even when they had an hour of hope--some unexpected joy--the uproar of a tumbrel-load of bricks, the sound of a stone-cutter's saw or the simple call of a mason would at once suffice to mar their pleasure. In fact, the whole neighbourhood was stirred by it all. From behind the hoarding edging and obstructing the three streets, there issued a movement of feverish activity. Although the architect was utilizing the existing buildings, he was opening them in various ways to adapt them to their new uses; and right in the centre of the vacant space supplied by the court-yards, he was building a central gallery as vast as a church, which would be reached by a grand entrance in the Rue Neuve-Saint-Augustin in the very middle of the frontage. They had, at first, experienced great difficulty in laying the foundations, for they had come upon sewer deposits and loose earth, full of human bones; besides which the boring of the well--a well three hundred feet deep--destined to yield two hundred gallons a minute had made the neighbours very anxious. They had now got the walls up to the first storey; and the entire block was surrounded by scaffoldings, regular towers of timber. There was an incessant noise from the grinding of the windlasses hoisting up the free-stone, the abrupt unloading of iron bars, the clamour of the army of workmen, accompanied by the noise of picks and hammers. But above all else, what most deafened you was the sound of the machinery. Everything went by steam, screeching whistles rent the air; and then too, at the slightest gust of wind, clouds of plaster flew about and covered the neighbouring roofs like a fall of snow. The despairing Baudus looked on at this implacable dust penetrating everywhere--filtering through the closest woodwork, soiling the goods in their shop, even gliding into their beds; and the idea that they must continue to breathe it--that it would end by killing them--empoisoned their existence.